What is Screen Pinning and How to Use it

What is Screen Pinning?

It is a feature that got introduced on Lollipop. It allows us to pin the device screen to a particular app; it simply means that the app you pinned is the only thing you can see and access until you unpin it.

This feature is useful when you are playing games or hand your phone to someone (especially kids) to use a particular app only.

As long as they don't know how to unpin an app and unlocking your device, they can only use that particular app.

Liked this feature? wanna try? Yes, then let's go ahead.

Steps to Enable Screen Pinning

By default, the Screen pinning is turned off. You need to turn it on to use this feature on your device.

Go to Settings > Security > Screen pinning.

Tap on the switch to enable Screen pinning option.

Now you can see the "Ask for (your lock method) before unpinning" option. This option is self-explanatory, right?

You can enable or disable it as per your wish. In this instance, I've enabled this option and I highly suggest you to do so.

That's it. Now you can pin app on your Android device.

Steps to Pin App

Remember that you can only pin the recently opened app. Here are the steps to do that:

Launch the app that you want to pin.

Tap on Overview button. It lists all the recently opened apps.

Now you can see the Pin icon (looks like pushpin) on your recently opened app.

Tap the Pin icon to pin the app.

Every time you can see the "steps to unpin" notification after pinning the app. Just tap "Got it" button to disappear that notification.

Now you can see the "Screen pinned" toast notification and the soft keys on the screen.

Steps to Unpin App

Depending on your device, you need to touch and hold the Back key only or Overview and Back key at the same time to unpin app.

Now you can see the lock screen. Unlock the device and you can see the "Screen unpinned" toast notification and the app is unpinned.

Final Thoughts

Your device displays the steps to unpin app when someone tries to get out of the app.

So, it means anyone can unpin it. That's why I’m suggesting you to enable the "Ask for pin (your lock method) before unpinning" option at the beginning of this guide.

When you enabled this option, even though someone unpins the app, they are redirected to the home screen and prompted for the pin or password (whatever your lock security is) to unlock your device.

And, it simply makes that you only can access your device and serves the purpose of Screen pinning;

If you want to utilize this feature completely, then you need to enable that option.

I hope that the information in this post is useful to you. If you find the information in this post useful, share this post with your friends.